Clips & Pointers

This report is one in a series of reports to the President and Congress developed by the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) on key contemporary issues in information technology. These focused reports examine specific aspects of the near- and long-term research and development and policies needed to capture the potential of information technology to help grow the US economy and address important problems facing the nation.

The report offers four key recommendations that will make digital libraries more pervasive and usable by all citizens:

Expand research in new systems for organizing online content, and address issues related to system scalability, interoperability, archival storage and preservation, intellectual property rights, privacy and security, and human use;

Create several Federally funded large-scale digital library testbeds;

Provide Federal funding to make all public Federal content persistently available in digital form on the Internet; and

Have the Federal government play a leadership role in evolving policy to fairly address intellectual property rights in the digital age.

"NISO, the National Information
Standards Organization, is pleased to announce the availability of the
report on its Networked Digital Reference Services Workshop that was
held
April 25-26, 2001 at the Library of Congress."

"This workshop, attended by a diverse group of stakeholders representing
the
library and information community was convened to explore what standards
are
needed to facilitate the development and implementation of Digital
Networked
Reference Services that can operate across institutional and geographic
boundaries and to advise NISO on the prospect of successfully
introducing
standards in this new arena of library service. The report "includes
summaries of and links to nine presentations given in open session and
three
discussion group sessions on protocol issues, knowledge base issues and
profiling issues. In conclusion, the group identified stakeholders who
should be involved in next steps, existing models that may help in
developing appropriate standards, and a group of interlinked standards
that
might be developed."

The report, available at <http://www.niso.org/netref-report.html>,
includes
summaries of and links to nine presentations given in open session and
three
discussion group sessions on protocol issues, knowledge base issues and
profiling issues. In conclusion, the group identified stakeholders who
should be involved in next steps, existing models that may help in
developing appropriate standards, and a group of interlinked standards
that
might be developed."

"This paper documents the National Library's proposed strategies and actions in relation to Australian and overseas electronic information resources for the period 2001-2002."

"The National Library of Australia's stated direction goal within its Directions for 2000-2002 is that "all Australians at their place of choice have direct, seamless access to print and electronic sources of information". The National Library is committed to undertake actions that progress this goal."

"The term "electronic information resources" in this paper is taken to mean:

Digital copies of existing formats such as print, manuscripts, maps and pictorial items.

Born digital formats such as electronic journals and web sites.

Metadata describing the above electronic resources and resources in other formats."

"The National Library's role in relation to electronic resources includes:

Collecting, preserving and making available Australian and other information resources in a wide range of formats, in accordance with the provisions of the National Library Act 1960.

Provision of services to support the Australian library system in areas such as resource discovery (bibliographic and metadata services) and directory services.

Contribution to international developments in library and information services in areas such as the development and promulgation of standards."

The following is from the Introduction to the Library of Congress Action Plan:

"The Library of Congress Cataloging Directorate is pleased to issue "Bibliographic Control of Web Resources: A Library of Congress Action Plan." The Action Plan stems from the Library of Congress Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium: Confronting the Challenge of Networked Resources and the Web, held on November 15-17, 2000. The Cataloging Directorate convened this invitational Conference as a working meeting of experts from the various communities that play a role in the creation, retrieval, and cataloging of Web resources. The primary goals of the Conference were: 1) to develop an overall strategy to address the challenges of improved access to Web resources through library catalogs and applications of metadata; and 2) to identify attainable actions for achieving the overall strategy. The aim of the conference, therefore, was to generate recommendations for the Library of Congress, in collaboration with the larger library community, to use as a blueprint for action to improve bibliographic control of the Web."

"The Cataloging Directorate is grateful to the 135 Conference participants for their insights and expertise. Their deliberations resulted in eleven sets of recommendations that have been distilled into this Action Plan. In developing the Plan, we took into account both the original Conference goals and LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress, the National Academy of Sciences report commissioned by the Library."

"From the content of the recommendations, we teased out some over-arching objectives for the framework of the Plan. This resulted in the identification of the following six objectives into which the action items were placed: 1 increased availability of standard records for Web resources; 2 enhancing record display and access across multiple systems; 3 collaboration among metadata standards communities for better bibliographic control of Web resources; 4 development of automated tools for harvesting and maintaining metadata; 5 provision of appropriate training for the Web environment; and 6 support of research and development to enhance bibliographic control of Web resources."

"We are keen on enlisting the support and involvement of varied organizations and groups in taking concrete actions to implement our plan. For each action item, we identified LC organizations, as well as potential external collaborators, to help with implementation. We also assigned a priority. The priorities have two aspects that were assigned as follows: near-term could be accomplished within eighteen months; long-term could be accomplished within five years. The aspect of "High," "Medium," or "Low" was assigned on the basis of the benefit each action would bring to the library community relative to the expense involved in carrying it out."

"...The Cataloging Directorate welcomes comments on any aspect of this Plan. Please send your comments to Judy Mansfield via email at juma@loc.gov
or via fax at 202-707-0973 at your earliest convenience, but no later than September 1 [2001]."

A Beta version of the Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard (METS) XML schema is now available from the official METS web site.

METS provides an XML-based framework for encoding descriptive,
administrative, and structural metadata for a digital library
object. It can be used both as a standardized mechanism for
exchanging digital library objects between repositories, and
as an encoding mechanism for local storage, retrieval and
display of digital library objects. METS has been developed
as an initiative of the Digital Library Federation
(http://www.diglib.org/) and is being maintained in
the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library
of Congress (http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/ndmso.html).

Input from the
library community regarding the design of the METS schema
is encouraged. Comments regarding METS' design should be
submitted to the METS listserv; details about subscribing
to the listserv are available at the METS web site.
A meeting of the METS initiative design group to discuss
revisions to the XML schema based on input from the
community has been tentatively scheduled for September 2001.
Comments regarding the METS schema should be posted to the
listserv prior to the end of August so that they can be
reviewed by the design group prior to that meeting.

The report is described in the following announcement from the Council on Library and Information Resources:

"In this report, Willis Bridegam offers a valuable case study in the advantages and disadvantages of depository libraries, their economics, and the practical and political issues associated with their creation. It considers the influence electronic publishing has had on the storage of paper publications. It also describes a plan developed by Five Colleges, Inc. (Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) that calls for deaccessioning duplicates within a jointly administered depository collection. Further details are in a press release published June 14, 2001."

"This report identifies and synthesizes existing practices used in developing collections of free third-party Internet resources that support higher education and research. A review of these practices and the projects they support confirms that developing collections of free Web resources is a process that requires its own set of practices, policies, and organizational models. Where possible, the report recommends those practices, policies, and models that have proved to be particularly effective in terms of sustainability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and applicability to their stated purpose."

"The report outlines the similarities and differences between print and free Web resources and describes how the nature and complexity of free Web resources comply with or challenge traditional library practices and services pertaining to analog collections."

This article by Clifford Lynch provides a quite comprehensive discussion of e-books. The article covers not only the hardware and software involved in the production of e-books, but also discusses content management, rights management, digital preservation, and the social implications of e-book use.

ITALICS Electronic Journal, a peer-reviewed Web journal provided by the Learning and Teaching Support Network Centre for Information and Computer Sciences (LTSN-ICS).

LTSN-ICS was established by the four Higher Education funding bodies in the UK to promote best practice in learning and teaching in universities and other higher education institutions. It has a particular mission to develop and disseminate initiatives in the delivery of learning to students.

ITALICS is intended to be a vehicle for members of the Information and Computer Sciences communities to disseminate best practice and research on learning and teaching within their subject disciplines. The journal will contain papers on current learning and teaching, specifically in Information and Computer Science at the higher education level including:

Innovative approaches to learning and teaching as described by researchers and practitioners

The variety of contexts in which students in the higher education learns, including work-based learning, placements and study visits.

Staff development.

The integration of theory and practice.

The impact of subject centres on learning and teaching, and the debate centered on associated pedagogic issues, including student and student-tutor interaction for learning.

"The first issue contains three papers which reflect the range of the domains with which we are concerned. In future, we shall publish papers as and when they are ready, and cumulate them into a numbered issue from time to time." Papers in the first and current issue are:

"Introduction," by John Feather, Professor of Library and Information Studies, Loughborough University Co-Director, LTSN-ICS.

"Use of Computer Assisted Assessment by Staff in the teaching of Information Science and Library Studies subject," by Derek Stephens and Anita Curtis, Loughborough University.

"Electronic Support for Computing Students at a Distance," by Pete Thomas, The Open University.

"Diversity and Motivation in Introductory Programming," by Tony Jenkins and John Davy, University of Leeds.

Papers published in ITALICS are anonymously peer-reviewed by referees and the Editorial Board, chaired by Professor Peter Enser of the University of Brighton and the current President of the Institute of Information Scientists, is exceptionally well placed to ensure that ITALICS reaches the highest standards. "It is a deliberate policy that ITALICS is a genuine electronic journal, which exists in no other form. Submission, refereeing, revision and publication all take place in a virtual environment. There will, of course, be an archived store of published papers, and they will be available for the foreseeable future. In line with the policy of the HE funding bodies, this journal is free of all charges to users."

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., has announced that a weblog has been added to his Scholarly Electronic Publishing
Bibliography. The weblog highlights new publications and other resources that may be of interest to the readers of his bibliography. The earliest date of of those items listed in the weblog is June 7, 2001.

"In the IT community, a White Paper is an informational brief offering an overview of a technology,
product, issue, standard, policy, or solution -- its importance, use and implementation, and business
benefits. With the growth of the Internet as a fast and easy vehicle for distribution of information,
White Papers have emerged as the standard way of communicating more in-depth information to IT and
business decision-makers in terms of problems solved and markets addressed -- the key criteria for
product selection. ITpapers:

clarify the broad outlines of an issue to non-specialists

summarize the implications of a new technical or business development

introduce a new technology to general IT business readers

stake out a company's approach to a particular issue or market

set out basics of a technical or business issue

educate technology readers

"

To be listed on ITpapers.com, White Papers must be IT-related (in broad terms), contain information of current interest to the IT community (beyond promotion of a single product or line of products), be freely available on the web, and be available online in HTML, PDF, Word, or text format. ITpapers may not be: solely promotional in function; product and sales brochures; data or spec sheets; promotional press releases.

At no charge, users can currently browse over 13,000 White Papers by selecting from clearly identified areas of interest: HARDware, SOFTware, PROFessions and INDustries, SECurity, COMMunications, SYStems, InterNET, CORPorate Computing, XSP Service Providers, and StartUP City. Users can also browse by specified topic, keyword or company.

"Information Today Inc., a key provider of technology conferences for more than 20 years with InfoToday (formerly the National Online Meeting), Internet Librarian, and KMWorld, is pleased to announce the 17th annual Computers in Libraries - the most comprehensive North American conference and exhibition concentrating all aspects of library technology. The conference offers a multifaceted program designed to meet the needs of librarians, information managers, systems professionals, Webmasters and Web managers, content evaluators, intranet strategists, portal creators, and information specialists. The focus of the conference is on leading-edge technology that is transforming library operations, products and services, and roles within all types and sizes of library and information services.

Digital Government: Technologies and Practices, Special Issue of Decision Support Systems (DSS), produced by the Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona. Call for manuscripts. The submission deadline is 10 August 2001.

"The next Special Issue of Decision Support Systems (DSS), scheduled to come out in 2002, will focus on "Digital Government: Technologies and Practices." The guest editor for this special issue will be Professor Hsinchun Chen of the University of Arizona.

"Many innovative digital government (or e-government) research programs are resulting in information technologies, systems and best practices to support effective, efficient, and intelligent delivery of government (federal, state, and local) content and services over the Internet. Law enforcement, criminal justice, social services, census statistics, government archives, crisis management, and e-voting are examples of such emerging digital government applications.

"Articles describing technologies, systems, best practices, and case studies in digital government (DG) are sought for inclusion in this special issue. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Information technologies and systems that support DG activities

Case studies of successful DG implementations

Effective DG dissemination techniques and best practices

Intelligent or innovative presentation of DG content or decision support for DG services

VINE, Library Information Technology Center (LITC), South Bank University London. Call for submissions. The submission deadline is 15 August 2001.

"All information professionals need to keep up to date with developments in communication and information technology to assess new opportunities for providing better services. In these days of constant change it is not an easy task. VINE's long history of fulfilling this information need has led it to become one of the most widely read and respected library journals in the field of information management, electronic information provision, epublishing and knowledge management."

VINE is a respected journal providing timely and definitive overviews of important topics for information and library services. VINE emphasizes informative, well-researched writing that will be of immediate practical use to its busy, influential readership. Each issue is an overview of a particular topic and many of the articles are by practitioners.

Forthcoming issues will be on:

Web Design (124, September 2001). The submission deadline is 15 August 2001.

Electronic journals, electronic books and elibraries (125, December 2001). The submission deadline is 1 September 2001.

"In knowledge engineering, 'ontology' has come to mean knowledge-level characterization of a domain or a task structure. As such, ontological engineering -- the principled design, maintenance, and application of ontologies -- has received much attention not only in academia but also in industry as it is critical in information systems and eCommerce design. For example, well-engineered domain or task ontologies are prerequisites for knowledge-level interoperability among information systems (e.g. B2B ontologies) as well as for intelligent processing by agents (e.g. search, error checking, privacy) for sharing and reuse of knowledge. Ontologies have been also studied in the context of process modeling, environmental engineering, aircraft design, machine translation, repository and catalog development in digital libraries, among others.

"The goal of this special issue is to provide a picture of the accomplishments to date in this field, the progress being made, and their potential relevance to the general readership of CACM. We encourage papers that address fundamental issues and principles of ontological engineering rather than papers on specific ontologies. In particular we solicit submissions on the following, though not exclusive, topics:

"As the scope and impact of information and communication technology (ICT) has grown, society has
begun to struggle with such issues as privacy and security, equitable access, freedom and responsibility in
online speech, human-machine interaction, and the impacts of ICT on work, leisure and education. In the
rush to develop a faster microprocessor or a “killer” application, it often seems that the engineers and
computer scientists responsible for the development of ICT have little or no awareness of these matters.
Over the past two decades a growing number of engineers, computer scientists, social scientists and
ethicists have begun to focus attention on ethical and socially responsible use of ICT, a difficult task that is
compounded by the rapid pace of technological development. The goal of ISTAS'02 is to bring together
ICT professionals, computer science and engineering educators, teachers and scholars in the humanities
and social sciences, policymakers, students, and ICT users for the purpose of establishing critical dialogue
on the social and ethical dimensions of ICT."

To foster a multidisciplinary and intellectually rigorous debate on the theoretical and practical aspects of interactive media in education.

To clarify the cognitive, social and cultural issues raised by the use of interactive media in education.

To radically improve teaching and learning through better interactive media.

To publish leading international research on the theories, practices and experiences in the field.

To link scholars and commercial practitioners

Through its innovative use of interactive Net-based media, to be an action research project which explores the changing face of journals, and more broadly, scholarly practice in the age of digital publishing and communication.

The term "interactive" refers both to interaction through the media with other people (e.g., teacher-student, student-student, researcher-teacher), and to interaction with the materials embedded in the media (e.g., control of a simulation or educational game). "Media" refers to the range of modalities that can be used to support learning. Media may represent educational materials, as well as other people relevant to that learning task. Media embraces text, sound, still and animated graphics, video, model worlds and virtual reality, as applied to the delivery of learning materials and communication between relevant communities. "Education" includes all levels and types: schools, colleges, universities, home learning, open and flexible learning, distance learning, personal development, skill learning, work-based learning, lifelong learning.

JIME's innovative Open Peer Review Process provides the opportunity to redesign the conventional journal review model to be more open, responsive and dynamic. JIME does not have a chronological concept of "issue", this being primarily an economic artifact of paper-based publishing. JIME publishes articles for open peer review as they are received. Final versions of articles are published as soon as they complete the Review Process.

The conference will provide opportunities to network, learn from other researchers and hear from leading players in Internet development. Keynote speakers include: Phil Agre, University of California, Los Angeles; Anita Allen-Castellito, University of Pennsylvania; Lisa Nakamura, Sonoma State University; Sheizaf Rafaeli, University of Haifa; and Barbara Warnick, University of Washington.

"Unlike other conferences on Technology in the Legal Sector that focus on either substantive Intellectual Property Law, Commercial Information Technology Products, or Academic Artificial Intelligence and Information Retrieval Research, Law & AI 3 looks across national and legal cultures, balances the concerns of research and practice, and brings all the key disciplines together to empower attendees to build a coherent picture of the shape of things to come!"

The conference has been designed to address the needs of lawyers, librarians, judges, technologists, and legal scholars, and will focus on how technology can improve the substantive quality of legal practice.

"The third annual ECURE 2001: Preservation and Access for Electronic College and University
Records Conference will once again bring together a unique blend of resources to discuss and analyze
the issues related to managing institutional information in electronic form. The conference will partner
knowledgeable individuals from a range of backgrounds -- comptrollers, attorneys, registrars,
technologists, archivists, academic administrators, and faculty -- to begin the interdisciplinary dialogue
necessary to identify viable solutions and best practices for management of electronic information and
creation, retention, and disposition of electronic records. The goal is to continue the dialog begun in
ECURE 1999, to help participants better understand the issues and challenges, learn about models for
collaboration, and prepare to address the challenges of planning and managing electronic records in
today's complex policy, technological, and political environment."

"Revelling in Reference offers an opportunity to share and network with an exciting group of practitioners and speakers, both national and international. The two and a half day program is designed for participation and action. This is a symposium where participants are challenged, issues debated and research reported."

"The issues and challenges facing reference and information professionals in 2001 are not new but different.

How do we deliver quality services online?

How do we know if we're meeting user needs and how do we know what
users want?

"Building upon research being conducted around the world, the International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval is the only music-IR meeting. The resulting information interchange will enable scholars to move more quickly towards viable solutions to many problems. The symposium will include both invited and submitted papers....[the conference will be] an intensive and lively forum on the rapidly emerging realm of Music Information Retrieval (Music IR)! ISMIR 2001 builds upon the very successful ISMIR 2000 meeting held last year in Plymouth, Massachusetts."

"In its fifth year in 2001, EEI21 - MEMPHIS continues to be a scholarly symposium which treats a wide variety of issues relating to electronic information and information technology. EEI21 - MEMPHIS offers a generous amount of time for discussion and reflection among participants."

"The aim of K-CAP 2001 is to provide a forum in which to bring together
disparate research communities whose members are interested in
efficiently capturing knowledge from a variety of sources and in creating
representations that can be (or eventually can be) useful for reasoning.
This conference will promote multidisciplinary research that could result in
a new generation of tools and methodologies for knowledge capture."

Keynote speakers include:

John McCarthy, Stanford University
"Phenomenal Data Mining"

Ken Forbus, Northwestern University
(The title of this keynote is not known as of 15 July 2001.)

"The International Chemical Information Conference & Exhibition has always had an entirely international character. There is no dominant nationality at this meeting and the 165- 200 attendees each year normally come from around 20 different countries."

A sample of the papers to be presented at this year's conference includes:

An Information Community Overview with Reference to the Potential Impact of Peer-to-Peer
Networking on Scientific and Technical Information

Evaluating Chemical Information Sources on the World Wide Web

Information at the Desktop: Is it Worth It?

The Role of Virtual Communities in Professional Scientific and Technical Domains: an
Applications Service Provider Viewpoint

"Providing machine-understandable data on the Web has become a
priority not just for publishers and scientific communities, but for a wide
range of commercial ventures and services. Resource discovery across a
diversity of services on the emerging Semantic Web is facilitated by the
use of shared metadata vocabularies such as the Dublin Core Metadata
Element Set."

"The Dublin Core workshop series has provided a forum for international,
cross-disciplinary metadata development since 1995. DC-2001, ninth in
this series, will include an international conference for the broader
metadata community with three principal missions:

to provide a forum to discuss further development of the Dublin
Core and related metadata standards

to provide a forum to present and exchange new ideas about
metadata and applications, not limited to Dublin Core, and

to provide tutorials on the creation, management, and use of
metadata applications."

Additional information will be added to the conference web site over the next few weeks and registration information should be available soon. Please see <http://www.nii.ac.jp/dc2001/>.

"The second IEEE Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia will be held in Beijing in the next "Golden Autumn"....The conference site, Zhongguanchun, known as China's Silicon Valley, is the national center of research, development and education with hundreds of universities and research institutions, and many successful companies providing both multimedia content and systems expertise. The conference complements this wonderful setting by providing a forum to presenting and exploring technological and artistic advancements in multimedia. Technical issues, theory and practice, artistic and consumer innovations will bring together researchers, artists, developers, educators, performers, and practitioners of multimedia from Pacific-Rim and the world."

"The technical program will feature keynote addresses, tutorials, special sessions, panels, technical demonstrations, in addition to technical presentations of refereed papers."

"Second Generation Hand-Held Devises...Immersive Environments...Wearable Technologies...Smart Architecture...Rich Multimedia...User-centered Design. All these and many other applications are transforming the [museum] visitor experience. And now MCN and the CIMI Institute have joined forces to explore them in a conference appropriate to the 21st century."

In addition to the presentation of papers, the conference has been designed to enable participants to:

"The new millennium holds great promise for higher education as new developments in information technology continue to transform all aspects of work." This conference is designed to be a "portal to the future, an opening in time and space to a new world of ideas and energy."

Technology is the most important driver of change in the information profession, and this Special Libraries Association (SLA) forum aims to help participants become capable not only of working with today's exciting technologies but also of understanding where these tools are taking them and their organizations. Understanding information and communication technologies is and will continue to be critical to the success of information professionals in all organizations.

Participants will include thinkers and practitioners from around the information world, and keynote speakers include: John Seely Brown, Xerox Corporation; Hal Varian, University of California at Berkeley; and Kevin Kelly, Wired Magazine.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the agency that administers federal grant programs for museums and libraries, will host a groundbreaking conference. Its purpose? To address the need for bold new models of integrated action among formal and informal educational institutions in meeting the demands and interests of 21st Century learners, and the particular potential for museums and libraries to inspire such action in their communities.

Building on an IMLS-sponsored roundtable that considered likely learning needs in this new century, and subsequent meetings around the country, the two-day conference will examine actual experiments in creating community partnerships for lifelong learning, as well as innovative ideas and resources. All who have an interest in, or experience with, such models of cooperation are welcome - from libraries, museums, colleges and other educational institutions, to representatives of the broadcast, technology, and research fields, and the funding and public policy sectors.

The VRD conference will explore issues in delivering
effective digital reference service in a variety of contexts, and setting
standards to ensure quality. Pre- and post-conference workshops focus on
assessing service quality and building real-time reference services. The
conference is hosted by the Information Institute of Syracuse, Syracuse
University's School of Information Studies; the Information Institute at
the School of Information Studies, Florida State University; and
SOLINET.

School for Scanning, 3 - 5 December 2001, Delray Beach, Florida, USA. (Early registration is encouraged as the number of participants is limited, and registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis.)

This conference provides current, essential information for managers of paper-based collections (including photographs) who are seeking to create, manage, and preserve digital assets. Participants will leave the conference better equipped to make informed choices regarding management of their digital projects. Although significant technical content will be presented, this is not a technician-training program. Conference content will include:

"The objective of this major international seminar is to highlight the many issues that must be addressed before developing a strategy for electronic library services, whether in academia, the public sector, the voluntary sector or the private sector. The issues that are discussed will be relevant to all types of library, ranging from the small to the very large."

"...Although there has been much discussion in the professional literature and at conferences regarding the electronic library, there has rarely been any coherent attempt to encompass all the issues that are raised for senior management in a single coherent event. This seminar aims to achieve such a coherent overview and is a follow up to the successful British Council seminar that took place in February 2000."

"The programme has been designed to explore a wide range of issues raised by the prospect of the electronic library. Speakers include various stakeholders in the information chain, for example librarians, publishers, subscription agents and booksellers. Legal, technical, psychological, financial, personnel and managerial issues will also be considered."